


Feet of Clay

by DrJekyl



Category: Mass Effect - All Media Types, Mass Effect: Andromeda
Genre: F/F, Implied Torture, It's uphill both ways for our heroes, Slow Burn, canon-level violence, cw: offscreen child death, kadara is horrible in every imaginable way, there's a lot to overcome
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-11
Updated: 2019-03-11
Packaged: 2019-11-15 13:45:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,506
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18074519
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DrJekyl/pseuds/DrJekyl
Summary: When Cora gets temporarily seconded to the asari Pathfinder team against her wishes, it's just the latest in a long list of things that haven't gone to plan since she arrived in Andromeda.





	Feet of Clay

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Inquartata (mackillian)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mackillian/gifts).



Things in Andromeda never turned out the way they were supposed to.  From the moment they'd arrived and awoken from cryo, it seemed to Cora that the Heleus Cluster was bound and determined to subvert their every expectation, if not destroy it completely.  Sometimes that was for the better. Meridian, for example, however you wanted to look at it. A terraforming network of unprecedented scale, a new home for humanity and an incredible mystery, all in one. More often than not, though-

"It'll just be for a couple of months," Ryder said in that almost wheedling tone she most often used towards Tann.

-it was very definitely for the worse.

"What part of 'absolutely not' do you not understand, Ryder?"  Cora crossed her arms against her chest, summoning up every ounce of her disapproval with the suggestion and trying to convey it with her eyes.  Unfortunately for her, Ryder was choosing to avoid her gaze in favour of of playing with the equipment.

"The part where I don't understand _why_ you're saying no," she said, half-heartedly twiddling the gain on one of the spectrometers.

"Just because I've worked with asari commandos before doesn't mean I want to now.  I'm part of the human Pathfinder team."

"I think Sarissa’s having trouble re-building her team.”  Ryder finally stopped playing with the spectrometer and turned around, trying a new tactic: flattery.  It was about as effective as Cora’s earlier glare. “You're a natural fit for the short term while she finds asari to plug the gaps."

"She should have thought of that before she abandoned her duty."

"She made a difficult decision-"

Cora sighed, running her fingers through her hair.  God, why did Ryder have such a knack for making things complicated?  "You don't understand what it meant. _Tiamna_ isn't just a bodyguard.  It's... you're supposed to put them above above all else.  Even your own life. And she broke that vow."

Ryder's eyes went hard.

"And when you joined the Alliance, you swore an oath to serve and protect others, even at the expense of your own life.  And when you joined the Initiative, on the Pathfinder team, you promised to help everyone find a home."

"It's not the same-"

"It is and you know it.  You helped find the asari ark.  You helped save it. Now go help them find a home."

* * *

'Near enough is good enough' was a phrase that, as Cora had learned in her first weeks on Thessia, was utterly antithetical to normal asari practice.  When you had hundreds of years of life to live, why not aspire to perfection? But it was exactly the standard the _Spyridoula_ had been retrofitted to, with some help from the salarians and turians, who'd found themselves in the same boat. Or lack of boat. The asari supplied their ridiculously over-engineered cargo ships, the turians armed them, and the salarians crammed them full of new scientific and medical equipment that was mainly from spares in ark storage but was, in some cases, literally ripped from walls.

It was an exercise in urgency and inter-species cooperation and, from what Cora could see, a great deal of arguing, but it was coming together.  But it was also a major step back from the _Tempest_ in every way: the vessels would be slower, nosier, smaller, less capable.  And Cora found herself wondering, somewhat uncharitably, if this was another little edge that Alec Ryder had somehow engineered for humanity out in the Heleus.  It seemed so unlikely that humanity's Pathfinder ship would survive a catastrophe -without a single scratch upon her shiny new hull- that left all of the other race's ships fit for not much more than scrap.  But if he had, somehow, had a hand in that at all, it might just have backfired. Humanity may have wound up with a better exploration vessel, but the crisis was forcing the other three Milky Way species to pool brains and resources and build stronger relationships that would probably benefit them in the long term. The old hegemony, prevailing again.

That was Andromeda for you though.  Alec found that out the hardest way you could.

"It's not the _Tevulia_ or the _Tempest_ ," Vederia said, palming the airlock control, "but the Pathfinder is confident it will do the job."

"Why'd they go for cargo ships?" Cora asked.  "There are still smaller exploration vessels and shuttles available.  Passenger transports too."

"Room, mainly, I guess.  I haven't really thought about it.  Oh, and I believe that the drive cores on them were massively overbuilt, so they can actually power all of the extra equipment we're cramming into them. Sarissa took me out for basic scouting work in one of the skiffs, but it didn't really have the scanners we and SAM needed to find anything worthwhile.”

The tour of the ship was brief, as was to be expected.  It wasn't just that the _Spyridoula_ was smaller than the _Tempest_ , but that asari ships tended to be simultaneously more open and more compact than human vessels.  A human architect would probably call it 'radically open plan living', with the crew quarters not just mashed together with the meeting space, but with the galley, the showers and the head, the latter separated from the rest of the space by a privacy screen.  The Pathfinder didn't get her own quarters either, something that would have most human COs considering mutiny. But it was common practice to for asari in command of a ship or a militia force to sleep with her command -sometimes in more than one sense of the phrase- if not maintaining separate quarters with her family.

The sleeping situation had taken a lot of getting used to, back with the Daughters.  It wasn't the 'figuring things out' aspect of it -there were privacy screens for that.  It wasn't even the noise of other people going about the business of eating and meeting and showering while you slept, a step again above what you’d get in an Alliance barracks.  It was that the asari approach to radically communal life also included radically communal sleeping arrangements, with even the biggest, surliest commandos in the Daughters -even Ygara, hell, even _Tethys_ \- piling into bed with each other after a hard day like puppies in a basket.  They'd been relatively accepting of her preference for a bunk to herself, but that hadn't always been possible, especially when they were hitching a ride with the asari Navy.  She'd adapted. And she'd probably have to do so again here, because there definitely weren't enough bunks here for everyone to get one of their own.

She found a chest -no lockers- to stow her gear in.  She could sort out sleeping arrangements later.

The biotic ping to announce the arrival of another commando was just this side of perfunctory, and when Cora turned to greet the newcomer, she found the asari Pathfinder herself, Sarissa Theris, standing there.

"Harper.  Welcome aboard," she said, extending her hand for a human-style handshake.   It was the first time Cora had seen Sarissa out of armour, in standard Initiative fatigues, and was slightly surprised by just how muscular she was.  Commandos tended towards the lean and wiry, with the exception of the occasional oddity like Ygara. ‘Stocky’, was a good word for Sarissa.. The stripes of her tattoos brought an element of severity to her broad, open face, drawing attention to a long nose and a jaw so square you could eat dinner off of it.  Not beautiful, in the way asari tended to be generically beautiful by human standards, but certainly striking. Maybe even handsome.

"Pathfinder." Searching for something nice to say, to break the ice, but unable to lie about being happy to be aboard, she found something else to lie about instead. "It's a nice ship."

"No it's not.  But she will serve."  She paused, assessing Cora even as Cora watched her.  "Vederia, go and see where we're at on provisioning, please.  Harper, my office is this way."

Knowing an order when she heard one, Cora followed her into one of the few private areas on the ship, a small, cramped office adjacent to the briefing area.  She sat when gestured to do so, across from the Pathfinder, who leaned forward with her hands set neatly down on the table, the classic asari 'let's negotiate' posture, intended to put someone at ease.  Cora mirrored her, deliberately.

"I'll admit it: I'm surprised you came," Sarissa said.  "You've made your feelings on my actions quite clear."

"Which makes it all the more surprising that you asked for me," Cora countered.

"I understand that you've read some of my work.  You should know that I don't believe in putting personal feelings above duty."  Sarissa tilted her head to the side in the asari equivalent of a shrug. "Few of our people feel the calling of a life at arms to being with.  We've lost most of those we had, either to the Kett or to the rebellion. Vederia is inexperienced. Sora and Micha have stepped up but they're over a century out of practice.  Perarunmi has more recent experience, but as a mercenary, not a commando.

"You, meanwhile, served with a decorated militia unit on Thessia and have conducted yourself with distinction here.  You are familiar with our ways, and with my way in particular. You know the current environment, and the political situation, and you are fully trained to be part of a Pathfinder team's command.  I'd be foolish not to ask for you."

"So it's pragmatism, then," Cora said, keeping her voice carefully neutral.

"Can a Pathfinder afford to be idealistic?" Sarissa said, a hard edge to her voice.  Matriarch Ishara had been idealistic, even after almost a thousand years of life. That idealism, arguably, had gotten her killed, but had also inspired thousands of asari to follow her to Andromeda.  "But I'm still curious as to why you said yes."

Cora shrugged, human style.  "I have a duty to the Initiative.  I'm here to help everyone find a home.  Human, turian, asari, even krogan, it doesn't matter. If here is where I'm most needed, then here is where I'll be."

Sarissa hummed thoughtfully. "And you can follow my orders?"  The question was deliberate and, Cora thought, intended to needle.  Sarissa wanted to see how she'd react. "Without question?"

"I'm a professional, ma'am.  Just tell me what you want me to do."

Sarissa held her eyes for a few seconds longer, searching her face, then sat back a bit, appearing to relax, her hands coming up from the table.  Negotiations over.  Test passed.

"I'll need your help in bringing the others back up to full combat readiness.  Vederia could use a role model closer to her in age. She thinks very highly of you."

Well, at least she wasn't the baby commando of the unit anymore.  Though the idea of mentoring someone twice her age would never not seem odd.  "Anything else?"

There was a lengthy pause while they considered each other.

"Don't be afraid to challenge me.  Matriarch Ishara encouraged us all to challenge our thinking, and, in her memory, I'd do the same."

 

* * *

 

A few heads turned when Vederia led Cora into the enormous mess hall aboard the _Leusinia_ for dinner.  Probably, she thought, less to do with her being a human on an asari ship and more to do with her being a human in _asari commando leathers_ on an asari ship.  She'd pulled them out of storage on the _Hyperion_ , somewhat surprised to find they still fit.  The Daughters' colours had been green and white, and it felt good to wear them again, their logo on her shoulder, even if green wasn't her colour.

She'd gotten more than a few double-takes for exactly the same reason when she was on Thessia, along with the odd pointed finger from curious children, but there'd never been any hostility to it, or uncomfortable questions.  There wasn't here either, and when the moment of surprise passed, she was just another body in the chow line, listening to the ebb and flow of conversation around her, watching the stately patterns of movement, and waiting, in that liminal space where the familiar becomes strange, for the whole of it to start making sense to her again.

She looked down at her own hand, the quirk of convergent evolution that gave her five fingers and nails and scarring tissues that matched the hands of those around in virtually every way save colour, and sighed.   _Goddamnit_ , Sarissa.  Why couldn't she have stuck to her own damn philosophy?  All those words about honour and duty, and Ishara had died, pleading with her missing protector for rescue.

The food helped with the strangeness of alien-yet-not, guided by Vederia to a regional soup dish Cora hadn't tried before that was surprisingly light. Asari foods tended to be sweet, fatty, and often quite bitter, and Cora had initially been privately shocked by just how much of it her fellow Daughters could pack away in a single sitting.  She could get by on the two meals a day asari preferred if she had to, but eating so much rich food in one sitting usually just made her queasy. It hadn’t been a month before Nisira insisted she learn how to cook with Thessian ingredients and assigned Janae to teach her.

Hmm.  She'd better remind Vetra about getting human MREs and ingredients aboard the _Spyridoula_ before they left.

And the shampoo.  Definitely the shampoo.  She was _not_ going to resort to mayonnaise again, so help her god.

"The soup is delicious.  Thanks for the recommendation."

"I had a human girlfriend for a while," Vederia said by way of explanation.

"Haven't we all?" said Micha, nudging her sister Sora, who just rolled her eyes.  They were, according to their briefing packet, matrons, with Micha the elder by just five years.  Almost five hundred years of commando experience between them, Micha was a sniper and combat engineer, with Sora working as her spotter and unit medic.

"You had more than enough for everyone," Sora countered.  "It was a new one every year for ten years, I swear to the Goddess."

Cora felt the change in the air before she could pinpoint its exact source.  A twang of suddenly tense nerves followed immediately by a sudden ripple of silence and stillness spreading out from one of the far doors.  Sarissa.

For a split second you could hear a pin drop.  Then, as if by perfect universal agreement, everyone returned to their meals and conversations. Noticeably louder than before, and with a strange undercurent to it that made Cora's senses ping again with discomfort.

She watched Sarissa take her place in the chow line as if nothing at all out of the ordinary had happened, then turned back to her new squadmates.

"Ok, so what was that all about?"

"That," said a short, wiry maiden, sliding into the empty seat to Cora's right, "was our twice daily 'oh fuck, we're going to have to decide what to do with her soon' moment."  She dumped her overloaded plate on the table and held out her hand for a human-style handshake. "Perarunmi T'Allir. Lately of Xanthi's Cost-Effective Raconteurs. Hacker/sapper/confined-spacer.  Runmi's fine if you don't want the mouthful."

"Cora Harper,"  Cora took the offered hand and discovered, as her bones ground together, that like many asari, Perarunmi had encountered but not yet mastered the art of the human handshake. "Wait, did you say Xanthi's _Cost-Effective_ Raconteurs?"

Perarunmi shrugged, blessedly released Cora's hand, only to immediately began attacking her own plate of food. "Our founder was this volus ex-advertising exec who wanted," she said around her first mouthful, "something that was 'memorable, descriptive and appealed to our target demographic.' She wasn't wrong. We were based out of Illium and we were never short of work.  Did get sued for false advertising at least once, though."

That last tidbit -in fact, the whole damn thing- begged more explanation.  Much more. But behind Micha and Sora, she could see Sarissa taking her own loaded plate off to the far end of the dining hall, to a table.

Completely on her own. In a room full of other asari.

It immediately struck Cora as wrong. Deeply wrong. Social isolation was punishment for asari, even more than it was for humans.  In all her time with the Daighters, she'd only seen that kind of thing once before, as part of a criminal sentence.

She turned back to her tablemates who all looked back at her with various levels of resignation.

"Is Sarissa- is your _Pathfinder_ being _shunned_?" she asked incredulously, and got four immediate, overlapping answers.

"Yes."

"No."

"Sort of."

"Not _really_."

The other four looked at each other and deferred to Micha, the eldest, for an explanation.  Micha pinched the bridge of her nose.

"What you just heard from the four of us is exactly it.  She's a source of division. There's no consensus on how to react to her, or what to do with her, or even if what she did was legal.  You've got people who believe the whole ‘tiamna was an unbreakable religious oath to the Goddess’ thing and ‘Sarissa should have died beside Ishara’.  You've got people who think it's just a fancy name for a bodyguard and there was no sense in Sarissa getting herself killed too. Some people think she should be held responsible for the Kett attacks on our Ark.  Other people think she made the best decision she could in terrible circumstances and you can't blame her for that. And a lot of people are just really pissed that Ishara's dead."

"Even the matriarchs are split over it," Perarunmi added, pointing with her knife towards another table that, now that Cora was looking for it, was more crowded than most.  Matriarchs, Cora had learned very early on, were like stars, attracting younger, lesser bodies into their orbits. "Matriarch Olachi and Matriarch Ayanda actually had an _argument_ about it yesterday.   _In public_."

Micha nodded.  "Until that's all resolved, Sarissa's going to be on the outer, Pathfinder or no.  Even the people who don't think she did anything wrong are going to steal clear until we decide how to handle her long-term."

Cora bit back her initial reply of 'that seems unfair'.  Xeno-diplomacy 101, Lesson One, Rule One of the Valkyrie Program: 'Don't judge the morality of your host culture by your own.  At least, not in public.'

Leading questions, though, were fine.

"But you're associating with her.  You're on her team. Just like me."

Sora shrugged.  "Someone had to.  We need a Pathfinder team if we're going to find a homeworld.  Too many people had already said no, either because of the AI thing or, well, the Ishara thing."  She looked to her sister. "It's not exactly what we signed up for, and I know we’re both rusty, but right now it's a lot more important than being a cost estimator."

"Or a financial advisor," her sister added.

"Sculptor," Runmi said, raising her hand, shoveling in food with the other.

Cora looked over at Vederia who had remained silent, looking down at her plate for most of the exchange.

"It is what I signed up for.  But it's also not. I was supposed to be learning, and I am, it's just Matriarch Ishara-"  She stopped for a moment, pushing something pale and mashed around her plate with resolute focus.  "Sarissa's a good teacher too. And I think she'll make a good Pathfinder, if we let her be one."

"If there's one thing I've learned about Andromeda," Cora said gently, remembering the frightened maiden she'd talked through her first real firefight, "it's that nothing here ever goes to plan.  We just have to make the best of things. Sarissa's-" She stopped as the words caught in her throat, unexpectedly. She knew every one of Sarissa's manuals, inside and out, tranto and pinchesa. "One of Sarissa's own manuals has some good advice: 'be the leaf that flutters in the wind, not the branch that breaks in the storm'."

"Roll with the punches," Micha said, and winked at Cora knowingly.

"She's good with that," Vederia volunteered.  Her head came back up and she looked Cora dead in the eye. "She hasn't stopped fighting from the moment we got here."

"She's a survivor," Cora agreed, and let the conversation pass onto other things.

Cora cast one last look over at Sarissa, mechanically working her way through her lonely meal, then turned her attention to her own dinner, letting the conversation of her tablemates and the din of hundreds of diners wash over her.

 

* * *

 

"I nominate Cora Harper as subcaptain of this unit and ship," Sarissa said, looking at her small band of troops gathered around the briefing table, joined now by the support team: two pilots, two engineers and a doctor.  "The Pathfinder succession will remain unchanged, with Vederia next in line."

Cora struggled to conceal her surprise: she thought she'd been brought on in a primarily advisory capability, not a command role.  Not to mention the concept of electing your commanders felt and at least somewhat odd to her. She almost opened her mouth to object, only to realise that someone on the rest of the crew, one of the matrons especially, would almost certainly save her the trouble.  Asari just didn't work like that. Putting the strange human maiden, as the Daughters had liked to call her, into the 2IC role would be a bridge too far, even for the famously accepting asari.

"I second that nomination," Vederia said immediately.

"Objections?  Any opposed?" When the questions were met with a round of shrugs and silence, Sarissa nodded in apparent satisfaction, and continued before Cora could summon her own voice to object.  "SAM, please make a note in the log."

"So noted, Pathfinder.  Subcaptain Cora Harper is now second in command of the _Spyridoula_.  Vederia Damali remains next in line for the position of Pathfinder should you fall."

"Excellent," Sarissa said, looking around the table from face to face to face, clearly in her element. "We have a ship.  It's not the ship we expected, but I'm certain she will serve us well and honourably. We have a crew, all of us strangers come together for a single, noble cause: to find a new homeworld for the asari, and any of those who wish to live amongst us.  What we don't have is a ground vehicle."

She rose, pulling up a hologramatic display of a familiar sight: a six-wheeled, all-terrain Nomad.

"The Initiative left the Milky Way with a complement of ten all-terrain, extreme-climate ground exploration vehicles known as Nomads.  During the rebellion against Nexus leadership known commonly as the Uprising, four were destroyed.  Of the remaining six, one was safely preserved for the _Tempest_ and is in use today. Two more have been located in the krogan settlement of New Tuchanka on the planet Elaaden.  Director Tann may disagree but I, for one, am inclined to let the Nakmor keep them. At least unless someone else is the one asking for them back."

A small titter of laughter at the joke, and Cora found herself relaxing a bit despite herself.  Sarissa clearly knew what she was doing. And that was almost... nice, after Ryder. Not that Ryder's command style was _bad_ , per se, but she was a scientist at heart, not a soldier, and inexperienced to boot, and in her mid-twenties besides.  God, those first few weeks had been so hard, watching her stumble and fumble to find her feet and get them all unified and pointed in the right direction, with something resembling a plan to guide them.  Even once things were running smoothly, they’d never been what Cora would call disciplined.

And even now, resentment flared and twisted darkly in her gut.  But not at Sarah anymore. At Alec. Alec, that smooth talking bastard who'd over-promised and under-delivered, even outright lied to her from day one.  If there was a lesson to be learned in all of that, it was 'don't mistake bluntness for honesty'. Or as Sarissa had put it, 'Water reflects, reveals and distorts, all while appearing transparent as glass.  So it is with words.'

"The other three have remained missing - until now," Sarissa continued, flicking over to the next display, a 3D map of which Cora recognised, with an internal groan, as Kadara.  "Intelligence from sources within Kadara Port indicates that it's highly likely that a group of Exiles known as Rocam's Irregulars have acquired one of the missing Nomads.

"The Irregulars have established a base of operations roughly fifty klicks west of a place called Kurinth's Valley.  I'm taking the name as a sign." Sarissa smiled in a way Cora had become familiar with while serving with the Daughters: anticipation of the hunt to come.  "If they've got it, we're going to find it and take it back. Let's talk about exactly we're going to do that.

"Harper, the human Pathfinder team has done a number of missions on Kadara.  What can you tell us about the environment?"

What followed was a long, merciless, and incredibly detailed planning session.  Which, as exhausting as it was, was something of a breath of fresh air after Cora's time on the _Tempest_.  Again, it wasn't that Ryder was a bad commander.  It was just that she was, well, so very _human_ about the Pathfinder position.  Twenty percent planning, ten percent luck, and seventy percent making it up as you went along.  And if that didn't work, throw Drack at them.

Sarissa, meanwhile, could have substituted for Nisira in a heartbeat.  No wonder Mama Nisi had been a fan.  Plan it, plan it to death, then plan it some more. Leave no stone unturned.  Leave no contingency unaccounted for. No concerned voice unheard, no question unanswered, regardless of whether it was from a cook or a commando.  Everyone about the _Spyridoula_ was in it together from moment one.

Maybe this would work out after all.

 

* * *

 

Six days later, and the operation was in full swing, their team positioned at various points around the valley the Irregulars were calling home.  The group was, so far, exclusively turian and it showed. Their squat, rectangular bunker was hidden on a hill within a barren little volcanic valley while having clear sightlines for everything within it, backed up by regular patrols, a small earthen rampart, and, because this was Kadara, the requisite moat of hydrosulfuric acid.  The air at the base of the valley was toxic and burned your lungs after just a few seconds of exposure, and -another mark of excellent planning- the little hill elevated the compound to just above the worst of it. Two entrances that they knew about, one on the far side of Cora's position, the other to her right, and a couple of flat, open spots either side, where you could park a shuttle or two - or a Nomad.

" _I've got eyes on the Nomad_ ," Micha's voice, soft but clear over coms.  " _Coming in fast from 281 again.  Runmi, they'll be on top of you in three_."

" _I see them_."  A pause. " _Looks like they've been in a firefight.  New blast marks on the chassis_."

"Kett, or Exiles?" Cora wondered aloud, directing her own attention, through binoculars,  away from the compound and towards the Nomad speeding towards them, kicking up a small comet's tail of dust as it went.  "Or could be Remnant."

" _My money's on Exiles_ ," Sora said.  " _They're feuding with Carthaan's Crew, remember?_ "

" _Would explain why they left in force this morning,_ " Sarissa mused.  " _Any signs of pursuit?_ "

Another pause before Micha came back with " _Negative._ "

The chatter died away as they fell back into watching and waiting.  In due course the Nomad reached the compound and began to offload, and the little hill briefly became a hive of activity.

"We've got wounded and prisoners," Cora noted, counting off the number of disembarkees under her breath.  "Two on stretchers. Five in cuffs. That brings us to-" she brought up her omni to check their group notes, "-twenty one Exiles, seventeen presumed in full fighting condition.  They must have lost one in the fight."

" _Why take prisoners_?" Dumni wondered. " _They've got to be struggling to feed everyone in there already."_

"That's probably why they're taking prisoners," Cora said without thinking, remembering some of the charnel houses she'd been to with the human Pathfinder team.  "They're all turian too.  Dextro."

" _You mean they're-_ " Vederia sounded queasy.

"Uh-huh.  Desperate times."

" _Cannibal turians.  Now there's something you don’t get back in the Milky Way,_ " Runmi added, sounding equal parts intrigued and disgusted.  “ _Outside of a horror vid, anyway._ ”

There was another lengthy moment of silence as everyone considered this.  Cora watched as more turians emerged from the base to help with the wounded and manhandle the prisoners inside.  Then it was over and everyone hustled back inside, the Nomad left sitting beside the bunker alone.

" _Pair up,_ " Sarissa's sudden order crackled over coms.  " _Micha and Sora. Vederia and Runmi.  Harper, I'm coming to you._ "

"Understood."

Cora took a sip from her canteen while she waited, keeping an eye on the compound.  It wasn't long at all before deliberate footsteps announced Sarissa's approach, and the asari herself was sitting down beside her.

"You think they're resorting to cannibalism?" she asked without preamble.

"Yes. We've seen it before.  First they run out of rations, then they run out of things to trade, then they start raiding each other. But everyone else is in the same situation so all they get, if they're lucky, is more ammunition. Empty bellies with plenty of guns are bad enough, but throw in cryo sickness and you've got a recipe for outright barbarism."

Sarissa looked appalled.

"Goddess on high.  This can't be left to stand if it’s true."

"No, it can't," Cora agreed.  "But objective one is the Nomad, ma'am.  We've been looking for an opportunity to grab it that wouldn't involve a firefight.  This might be it. They're tired, injured and busy dealing with their wounded."

"And their captives," Sarissa said with a sneer of distaste.  "I agree. Let's open it up to the others and see-"

" _Two shuttles inbound at 283_ ," Micha interrupted over coms, " _hugging the ground.  Looks like Carthaan's Crew_."

"Shit," Cora swore under her breath, snapping her binoculars up and over.  “This could complicate things.”

"No, this may be exactly what we've been waiting for," Sarissa said from her own binocs, then addressed her next words to the group.  "If they’re here for a fight, we can let them shoot it out. Then either grab the Nomad while everyone's distracted, or mop up the survivors and take it then.  Thoughts?"

" _We're in a good position to provide covering fire if you want to get in close, Pathfinder_ ," said Micha.

" _Ede and I can sneak in and get ready to make a play for the Nomad_ ," Runmi added.

"Harper and I will disable the shuttles and provide a diversion if you need one," Sarissa said, looking over at Cora as if expecting a challenge.  It was a very light and quick plan by asari standards, but compared to some of the ones they'd run on the _Tempest_...

Besides, this was _Sarissa Theris_.  However the incident with Matriarch Ishara had played out, she was a legend in the field, and there'd been a time where Cora would have given her right arm to follow her into battle. And, as Sarissa had written, failure to act decisively when the opportunity came was worse than not seeing the opportunity at all.

Cora nodded her agreement, and began reconfiguring her loadout from surveillance to diversionary.

"Sora, Micha, engage only if it's necessary," Sarissa ordered, beginning the same process as Cora.  "I'd still prefer if they didn't know we were here at all. Runmi, Vederia, cloak up and start in. We'll be behind you shortly.  Helmets on and comms open. Good hunting, everyone."

" _Good hunting_ ," they all echoed back.

The shuttles came in, low and fast as Sarissa and Cora quickly returned to their supply cache for smoke grenades and emp burners, swapping sniper rifles for shotguns.  Then it was into cloak and quickly picking their way down the rocky side of the valley as the shuttles touched down on the opposite end of the bunker as the Nomad. Seconds later, people poured out of them -turians, mainly, but a few of humans too, and the unmistakable bulk of two krogan- and formed up around the bunker's two entrances.

" _They're preparing to breach_ ," Micha's voice sounded over coms.  " _I count twenty four, but I don't have a clear line behind the shuttles or the Nomad.  Watch for stragglers_."

Cora's suit pinged with an environmental warning as they reached the natural acidic moat, the very same time that someone in the raiders blew a set of charges on the compound's door, and a firefight began in earnest.

Cora followed Sarissa, jumping over the stinking moat with the aid of a quick biotic lift.  Risky, in that it caused a small flare and momentary disruption of the cloak but Sarissa evidently felt like they could chance it.  With the firefight going on, and the shuttles between them and the compound, it was unlikely that anyone would look behind them and even if they were, would be too preoccupied to do anything about them until they were long gone.

" _Wait, got a group of four heading to the Nomad.  Looks like they're going to make a play for it."_

" _We're approaching the Nomad,_ " Runmi said.  " _Should we engage?_ "

" _Discreetly,"_ Sarissa ordered, sliding up next to the airlock of the first shuttle, Cora right beside her.  It was still idling, likely at least one person still on board. " _Micha, Sora, provide an assist if you're able._ "

" _Understood_."

"Fore," Sarissa said, pointing to herself as her SAM started hacking the access hatch, then pointed to Cora. "Aft."

Cora nodded, and the next few seconds passed in a blur of motion and violence.  Preoccupied by the firefight unfolding outside, the two turian occupants of the shuttle were completely unprepared when Sarissa fell upon them, executing them with two quick shots to the head as they were turning towards her.  Sarissa's SAM quickly took care of the fight control lockout, and then the access panel on the second shuttle, where the process repeated itself. Neat, clean, efficient. Sarissa was good. Over coms she could hear a similar situation play out near the Nomad, the others coordinating an instant dispatch of their raiders and their hasty disposal over the rampart and into the acid moat.

"Vederia, status?" Sarissa demanded.  Outside the cockpit window, the battle had largely moved inside the bunker, with only a dead and wounded remaining outside.

" _Runmi's trying to bypass the Nomad's lock, but I think we're going to need SAM for an override,"_ Vederia reported _._

 _“I can do it with a bit more time,”_ Runmi corrected. _“They’ve done something odd to the power routing.  Junkyard mods.”_

"Understood.  SAM, how many casualties have they taken?"

"Excluding those within the shuttles, there are a total of eleven dead or wounded raiders outside of the compound," SAM reported immediately.  "Pathfinder, the shuttle's sensors indicate only sporadic gunfire coming from within the bunker.  Based on ambient noise levels, I estimate twelve combatants left inside. If you wish to take the bunker, now would be an opportune moment."

Sarissa turned back towards Cora, her eyes alight and a dangerous smirk on her lips.  A far cry from the serious expression worn aboard the ship, or the author's profile pictured in her manuals.

"A dozen against two.  Not the best odds," she drawled, and Cora had to laugh at the old, old commando joke, made funnier by the adrenaline high of comabt, "but they should have thought of that before they stole Initiative property.  Shall we?"

"Lead the way, ma'am."

"Everyone else, hold your position.  We're going to clear out the bunker. We'll let you know when we're coming out.  Engage anyone else at your discretion."

" _Acknowledged._ "

The inside of the bunker was exactly what Cora had expected it to be, no more, no less.  Certain things happened when you blew open a door and then threw grenades at a bunch of turians you'd just pissed off by blowing their door in, and those things tended to involve a lot of variously coloured blood-splatter patterns and misplaced body parts.  

As they moved deeper into the bunker, clearing it room by room, with SAM counting down the number of dead in her ear and sporadic gunfire dying away in fits and spurts, it only got worse.  Not because of the dead piling up in the corridors, but because of everything _else_.  The darkness. The filth.  The vermin. The terminal entries.  All the evidence of two dozen people living in too small a space, on too little food, while going slowly and violently insane from untreated neural decay.

"How could they live like this?" Sarissa whispered, seemingly to herself.  She looked grey, almost ashen, and Cora vividly remembered the first cannibal bunker they'd encountered.  It'd been on Kadara too.  Human, that time,

"Cryo sickness," Cora supplied, as they stopped in what looked like the sleeping quarters.  "These were good people once. But if it isn't treated, the neural decay destroys your impulse control and gives you a dopamine high no matter what you do."

"Athame guide them," Sarissa said, and gestured with her hands as if to ward evil.

The kitchen was worse, as Cora knew it would be.  And she didn't comment when Sarissa had to stop for a moment with her eyes closed to centre herself, because god knew that after that first bunker, all three of them -Cora, Ryder and Vetra- had damn near puked their guts out then and there.

Before leaving, in complete unspoken agreement, they'd burned the place out until nothing was left but twisted metal and slag.  And they were going to need to do the same here.  Because Cora was not prepared for the slave pen.  

The slaughter, yes.

The acid, no.

The _child_ , no.

" _Pathfinder, Harper, are you alright in there?"_ Micha's voice was unexpected, and made them both start.  It was almost welcome, a distraction from the bile rising fast in Cora's throat.

"Fine, Micha," Sarissa said, tones clipped, body rigid.  "We're almost through."

" _Are you sure?"_ Sora, this time, adding her two cents.  " _I don't like your vitals._ "

"I said we're fine!"  Sarissa snapped, a muscle in her jaw twitching, her breathing heavy, clearly anything but. Her biotic corona grew slowly in intensity, even as she stood, stock still, staring at the awful vista.  Staring for too long.  They needed to complete the sweep, put anyone who'd had a part of this safely in the ground.

_"Harper-"_

"Stow it," Cora replied, and killed comms for a second.  ‘If your sister cannot rise, stand for her. Be her strength, and let her be yours’.  "Sarissa," she said, and then again, louder, when it got no response.  The third time, remembering that pinchesa, she placed a gentle hand on Sarissa's arm in the hopes of helping ground her again. Grounding them both.

It seemed to help.  A bit.  The corona faded, and Sarissa came back from whatever place she'd gone.

"Micha, Sora, start gathering up our gear,” Sarissa ordered curtly. “I want to be out of here the moment we've got the Nomad open.  We're taking the shuttles too."

" _Understood._ "  Concern lingered in Sora's voice, but she didn't press further.

" _Uh, about that, Pathfinder_ ," Runmi said, " _We've got a small problem.  You know those junkyard mods?  Well, the Nomad's actually been rigged to blow.  I can disarm it, don't worry about that, but it'll take at least half an hour.  You may as well take your time._ "

This just kept getting better and better, a sentiment Sarissa clearly shared, her hand free hand clenching with a clear biotic corona.

"We're almost through," Cora said after the silence stretched out a too long ago.  "Be careful. No unnecessary risks."

" _Acknowledged._ "

And then, as if on cue, there was a final gunshot nearby, and SAM's voice on the open com, suddenly urgent.

"Pathfinder, I am detecting a large energy spike in the bunker.  I believe someone has set the fusion reactor to overload in approximately two minutes and thirty seconds."  Pre-empting their next question, SAM added, "I do not believe I can stop it in time. I recommend immediate evacuation.  I am prepping both of the shuttles."

Cora and Sarissa exchanged mutually horrified looks, then, as one, turned and began to run back out the way they came, towards the shuttles.

"Everyone, evac!" Sarissa ordered as they careened through the dark, hurdling the bodies of the dead.

"SAM, what's a safe distance?" Cora added, picking up speed.

"The valley walls should direct most of the force of the blast upwards," SAM replied, ever-cool under pressure.  "Specialists Micha and Sora should retreat into the next valley. The rest of you will need to evacuate by shuttle to ensure you are clear of the blast radius.  Two minutes and fifteen seconds remaining."

"You heard them!" Sarissa shouted.  "Runmi, Ede, take the shuttle closest to the bunker.  Harper and I will take the far shuttle." They burst back out into the light, and then, together, all but tripped over the bodies piled up around the entrance.  "Sora, Micha-"

"Two minutes remaining, Pathfinder."

" _We're over the lip!  We should be clear. Worry about getting yourselves out._ "

"One minute, forty-five seconds."

The engines of both shuttles were already alight, when Cora and Sarissa reached them.  A glance over her shoulder revealed the other two, heads down and arms pumping, sprinting towards them.  But then Sarissa suddenly wasn't beside her anymore. Cora stopped, turned and saw Sarissa starting back down the full length of the bunker, towards the Nomad.

"Sarissa-!"

"I can shield it," Sarissa shouted back.  "The rest of you get out of here!"

"From a fusion core going up?"  Cora started after her, passing the other two going the opposite way and gesturing for them to keep on.  "Are you crazy?"

"I have the strongest shield of anyone!  Shields are what I _do_!"

"Pathfinder, that is extremely ill-advised," SAM cut in, sounding worried.  "The likelihood of you surviving the blast at this proximity is less than ten percent.  If you survive, the probability of you being severely injured is ninety nine percent."

Shit, she wasn't listening, and she was gaining distance on Cora. _Shit._

"Sarissa, you're the Pathfinder now!  You can't take stupid risks with your life like this," she shouted, then summoned up her focus and _charged_ forward, careering into Sarissa with enough force to knock her over.  They rolled in the dirt for a few precious seconds, grappling, until Sarissa had Cora pinned on her back.  

"We will get something out of this day!" Sarissa snarled, eyes wide.

"Goddess damn it, Sarissa! Don't be an idiot. Don't be Ishara!"

Sarissa stopped dead, and her expression faded from one of determination to such unbridled fury that Cora was momentarily worried that Sarissa might actually throttle her.  But then the asari stood, silent, stony faced, and pulled Cora to her own feet, and then they were running for their lives again, back towards the shuttle.

The rest of their escape passed in silence, broken only by the deep bass thunder of the fusion core going up, close enough that the ship rolled and pitched in the shockwave.

 

* * *

 

The silence continued back aboard the _Spyridoula_ , the team going through the routine of cleaning themselves and their gear without a word, and getting medically cleared.  Failure stung hard, just as it should. But more than that, Vederia and Perarunmi had seen enough of Cora and Sarissa's argument to know that something out of the ordinary had happened, and to have told the other two.  And Cora's skin still crawled with disgust at what they'd found in the bunker, and it itched with anger, too. What the hell had Sarissa been thinking? Yes, her shield was _good_ , but it wasn't _that_ good, was it?  Not to survive standing practically right on top of fusion core when it blew.  That was like saying you could walk on the surface of a star and come out unharmed.

The Pathfinder, cleaned and her gear neatly stowed away, had locked herself in her office.  And Cora was going to have to do something about that, and about the tension in the air, thick enough to cut, because that's what a subcaptain did: deal with problems before they poisoned the unit.  And that was why, after her polite knock went ignored, Cora ignored her better judgement and let herself and and a bottle of Armali-guild golden vodka liberated from the galley into Sarissa's office anyway.

She sat herself down across from Sarissa, poured out two shots and pushed one over to the Pathfinder, who took it without a word, and downed it that way too.  Cora followed suit, returning her glass to the table with the sharp clink of glass on metal. Then she leaned forward, putting her hands on the table.

Sarissa did not match her, but remained standing, the glass held close to her chest.  They stared at each other for a long, tense minute.

"You don't get to judge me," Sarissa said abruptly, anger in her eyes and the exactingly precise tone of her voice.  "Or Ishara. She did what she thought was right. So did I."

"I'm not here to judge-" Cora protested, but Sarissa cut her off cleanly, her biotics flaring even as her voice stayed deadly level.

"No, you've already done that.  So has everybody else. Goddess above, I should never have taken that stupid title!  ' _Tiamna_ '. 'Guardian of the sacred temples'. Do you think it doesn't haunt me at night, Harper?  Hearing her die?"

Cora matched her tone for tone.  "Do you want to join her then? Is that it?  Because I don't know how else to explain what happened down there."

"I've shielded arks and entire cities from artillery barrages.  I could have held it."

"Or you could have died."  When that didn't seem to have the necessary impact, she continued, "And then the asari would have no Nomad _and_ a half-trained maiden with exactly three combat missions under her belt as their Pathfinder."

Cora held Sarissa's gaze, unflinching.  And, to her surprise, it was Sarissa that broke first.  She slammed the glass down on the table, throwing herself into her chair with about as much grace.  Cora tried to cover her surprise by pouring them another round. Sarissa took hers but held it, rather than downing it right away, watching as Cora drank hers.

" _Goddess_.  I never wanted to be the Pathfinder, you know.  I was perfectly happy being a bodyguard." Sarissa frowned down at her glass, eyes flickering back up to Cora and back down again. Then she shoulders sagged, her biotic corona vanishing as she downed the drink.  Her next words were little more than a guilty whisper. "I didn't even want to come to this goddess-forsaken place."

Cora ran a hand through her hair -thanks to Vetra, freshly shampooed and conditioned- and sighed.  Whatever she'd been expecting, barging into Sarissa's office, it wasn't this. "Why _did_ you come then?"

Sarissa reached out and took the bottle, and inspected the label at length before pouring two more shots out.  "Why did anyone come? The chance to do- to _be_ someone different."

"But you were a hero back in the Milky Way."

"Yes.  Yes I was."  Sarissa drank, and Cora did too.  Three shots in twice as many minutes; this was going to get very bad, very quick at this rate.  "And my manuals were very well read. And I was well set up for the future. And that was it."

"I'm not following you."

Sarissa sighed, and resumed her inspection of the bottle.  "You're human, so I don't imagine it ever struck you as odd that a matron would write manuals of philosophy and practice.  But it is. They're usually the domain of matriarchs. Matrons aren't supposed to have the time to sit and ponder the inner workings of the universe.  We're supposed to be learning, raising our children, teaching the maidens, managing the day-to-day workings of our communities."

"But you had time."

"I had time.  Biotics like mine come along once in a generation." Sarissa shrugged.  "Maybe twice, if we're lucky. I'm valuable. Extremely valuable."

The reality of the situation dawned on Cora all at once, so powerfully that she almost missed the next round of drinks being poured.  "They held you in reserve," she said wonderingly. "You're trained as a commando, but they wouldn't let you be one. You're the matron with the shield.  One stray bullet and they'd lose an irreplaceable asset. In Andromeda you can be a commando."

Sarissa smiled tightly and chinked their glasses together.  "'Come to Andromeda. Be a 'real' commando again. Be the leader you always wrote about.'" She threw her drink back; Cora did not.  "That was the pitch, anyway. I'd just have to be her bodyguard for a time. And then she _insisted_ on meeting the Kett.  Against my advice. And now she's dead, and I'm Pathfinder, and my own people hate me for it."

"Sounds a lot like the spiel I got from Alec," Cora admitted.  "I know I'm not exceptional by asari standards, but I'll one of my species' most powerful biotics.  And yet nobody actually needed me back in the Milky Way. The Alliance didn't. Sometimes it felt like I had more in common with your people than my own.  So when he said," she dropped into a bad approximation of his voice, "’I need you to help me lead the human Pathfinder team, Harper,’ I believed him. Because I wanted to.  I wanted to be needed. To do what I was good at. And then he passed me over for his child, who doesn't really need me either, so she sent me here."

Sarissa poured herself a fifth shot, and raised it in a toast. "To Pathfinder Alec Ryder."

Cora raised her own.  "To Pathfinder Ishara.”

"May she find peace in the embrace of the goddess."

"May he get exactly what he deserved."

They laughed, clinked, drank, returned their glasses to the table, sitting in a silence that was almost companionable.

"Goddess, after everything today in that goddess-bereft bunker, I wish we'd at least gotten the Nomad."  Sarissa sighed heavily, and poured yet another round, this time not quite getting it all in the glasses. "Nothing in Andromeda goes to plan, does it?  Big things, little things. It all goes sideways."

"You're right," Cora said and, surprising herself, reached across the table to take Sarissa's hand.  "Nothing goes to plan here. But that's not always a bad thing."

Sarissa looked down at Cora's hand, looked back up at Cora in clear surprise and then, almost hesitantly, smiled, small and crooked. "Well. I guess we'll see then, won't we?”


End file.
